


The Time It Takes To Heal

by junkster



Category: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Best Friends, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28109736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkster/pseuds/junkster
Summary: It's as he's lying on his back, listening to some sad country music one night that Dale realises that he's maybe sorta neglected Tucker for the last couple of weeks, he's been so wound up in Alison.
Relationships: Dale Dobson/Tucker McGee
Kudos: 3





	The Time It Takes To Heal

Alison, well…she doesn't stick around for too long. Three weeks, almost. Oh sure, they have a lot of fun, and she really, _genuinely_ seems to like him, but inevitably the long-distance thing doesn't help (Dale doesn't have a truck, for starters, and there's only so many times he can beg the keys for Tucker's replacement, clapped-out Ford). They talk on the phone every day and eventually they stop reminiscing about their shared experience at the cabin and she starts telling him about college, and in a roundabout sort of way he comes to realise that she's surrounded by young, cute guys with their whole future ahead of them, some of them already rich and absolutely _not_ hillbillies. She ends it one night after bowling, kindly and gently like how she does everything, and somehow Dale isn't too torn up about it. Somehow he's just happy that he got the time with her he did, and that Tucker was right - he really _could_ achieve his goals if he put his mind to it.

Lying on the floor of his trailer the next evening, listening to something sad by Kathy Mattea and pleasantly wallowing, he starts thinking about how he's been so wound up in Alison that he's maybe sorta neglected Tucker for the last couple of weeks. They've been bowling and such, but mostly for Dale to enthuse 'Ali did this' and 'Ali said that' and 'Can you believe this girl wants to _kiss_ me?' while Tucker smiles patiently and keeps on trying to perfect his throw with those new fingers of his.

**********

Tucker has this little single-storey house just outside of their tiny town, nestled off the pothole-ridden road and into the woods, white clapboard siding bright amongst dark pines. It’s the house he grew up in, left to him by his mom when she died years ago, just a stone’s throw from the sluggish little creek where they used to go catching frogs when they were kids. It looks better now than back then thanks to Tucker’s aptitude for fixing things up and his inability to sit still. Every gutter is clear, every tile on the roof secure, every inch of the clapboard painted clean. If he’s not up a ladder with a hammer and nails then he’s chopping wood or working on his truck or fixing the potholes in the road that the county doesn’t have the money to fix.

Chickens sift through the grass and pine needles for grubs. As Dale walks up the path towards the house, Jangers flops down and spreads himself out on the gravel to soak up the very last of the evening sun.

Dale closes his eyes and breathes in the scent of the trees, and along with the familiar smell of freshly-sawn wood and sticky resin comes the now apparently invariably linked sensation of hot, wet blood spraying across his face, getting in his eyes and his mouth, the taste of iron on his tongue. He snaps his eyes back open and curls his fingers hard into his palms until his short nails dig into his skin, looking towards Tucker’s house; towards the tiny porch with its pair of chairs.

Their chairs.

Tucker’s leaning on the painted wooden railing, watching him, a beer dangling from one hand. The sight of him makes Dale’s heart begin to slow from its panic, a soothing balm on his nerves. He turns away from the dark of the trees and heads for the light - that white house and that corn-blonde head of hair.

"Good boy Jangers," he murmurs as his feet crunch on gravel. "Stay close, okay boy?"

**********

Tucker throws him a Pabst from the fridge and it's as he does so that Dale realises how empty said-fridge is and how Tucker's lost some weight, his shirt hanging a little looser than it used to. It's one of Dale's favourites, a soft, red plaid, the sleeves rolled up over his strong forearms.

"How's Alison?" Tucker asks as he settles down into his chair.

"She's good! I mean, she dumped me, but she's doing good at college."

Tucker does kind of a double-take, surprise all over his face as he rolls his head against the back of the chair to look at him with a squint. "She dumped you? Why? I thought you were getting on real good?"

"Yeah, we were, but she wants to be able to give it a go with a smart, young, rich college kid like her, y'know? I'm no good for her, Tucker, we both knew that. No prospects, no money. A little old. I'm pretty sure she wanted to fix me, make me somethin' better, but y'know. You can't fix hillbilly, right?"

Tucker doesn't try to dispute any of it this time, his eyes soft with sympathy. "I'm sorry, man. I know she meant a lot to you."

"I'm okay with it, y'know?" Dale says, shaking his head, because he _is_ , and who'd've thought it? "You were right, Tuck! You showed me I was able to get the girl and even have her think I was kinda cute. She liked me for _me_. The only other person in the world who's ever done that is you!"

Tucker doesn't answer, just smiles faintly and nods as he watches Jangers slowly herd the chickens as they pick their way towards the coop for the night. He looks exhausted, honestly, dark under the eyes and like every smile is an effort. He takes a mouthful of beer and Dale watches the bob of his throat as he swallows, eyes following the sweep of stubble along his jaw.

"What'd you do today?" he asks, just to keep Tucker talking; keep him from withdrawing.

"Fixed up some stuff in the house. Did some work over at the garage. Y'know."

"You need me to go to the store for you?"

Tucker's eyes narrow just slightly. "I don't need babysitting, if that's why you came over here."

"It's not, I just..." Dale hesitates, squeezing his half-empty beer can between his fingers a couple of times, the thin metal depressing and then popping back out. The sound makes Tucker flinch.

"What?"

"I'm sorry I haven't been around much."

"I didn't ask you to be, did I?"

"No, but we've always been together. Longer'n I can remember. Hell, if things'd been the other way 'round I know I would've felt lonesome."

"I'm fine, Dale."

"Are you really, though?"

There's a pause as Tucker cracks his neck to one side and then his broad shoulders sink as he sighs. It's a sigh that carries the weight of the world. He says, low and lacklustre: "As okay as can be expected, I reckon."

Dale's skin prickles with goosebumps as the sun disappears below the horizon and the porch lights come on, the night starting to draw in around them. "I'm sorry, Tuck," he says earnestly. "That you had to go through what you did, that I wasn't there to look after you at the end. And even after we left that hell-hole, I still haven't been looking after you. I'm the worst best friend in the world."

"That's not true," Tucker counters wearily, almost an automatic response by now. "I guess I just don't bounce back as quick as you, 's'all. You're tougher'n me."

Dale frowns. “Well now, I didn’t get stung by a swarm of bees, or kidnapped, or strung up in a tree for hours, or have my fingers cut off, or nearly bleed out because my friend is a giant idiot.”

Tucker tips his head to concede. “True.”

“The whole thing was made easier for me by Ali,” Dale admits. “Even when all that bad stuff was happening, she was there and she was beautiful and she liked me.”

“Yeah, she did. I told you she would, didn't I?”

“But me fallin' for her meant you got hurt more ‘cause of me. You got hurt _for_ me, saving Jangers. It was all my fault, Tucker."

“Oh, so you set those college kids on us? Come on, Dale. I never expected you to spend time with me when you had her, I told you that already.”

“I got enamoured of a girl I'd known for hours and spent time with her over the best friend I’ve known since we could barely walk!”

“Well there comes a time when you gotta put relationships ahead of your buddies.”

“I don’t wanna do that, Tuck.”

“Then you’re gonna be stuck with me for a long time.”

“Good. That’s what I want.”

“Oh, I'm the one you're gonna give up domestic bliss for?"

“We can make our own domestic bliss, and it’ll be real quiet without kids in it, too.”

Tucker smiles wryly as he sets his empty beer can down on one of the arms of his chair and stretches his legs out, long and lean. “You deserve better, Dale. Someone who can afford to take you bowling every night.”

“You wanna know my perfect day?"

"I'm not sure that I do, Dale."

"Collectin' the eggs, feedin' old Jangers, watching you fix the truck and the way you get engine oil on your fingers and wipe it across your jeans, heading for a ride out to the lake, not seeing barely another soul all day, watching the sun set and the way it makes you glow all over like some kinda angel.”

Tucker's expression goes from mild interest to disgust. “I do not _glow_.”

“Sure you do,” Dale says earnestly. "You make me think of summer days, Tuck. Not the humid, sticky ones, the ones that're just right. Gold fields of corn and bright blue skies.”

Tucker’s head cocks just slightly in bemusement. “I didn’t know that, Dale. Thank you.”

“Sorry to get all romantical on you. You remind me of home, ‘s’all. The good things about home, anyway."

"You don't get bored of doin' those things we've been doin' our whole lives?"

"Never."

Tucker regards him pensively for a long moment before turning back to the yard, propping his feet up on the bottom strut of the railings. Crickets have started to sing, alongside the strange ringing of the last of the year's spring peepers. It sounds like home, and it makes a lump form in Dale's throat, something that's been happening a lot just lately, since they almost lost all of it. Almost lost each other.

"Hey, Tuck?”

“Yeah?”

“Why d’you share so much with me?”

“How d’you mean?”

“Your house, your time, your vacation cabin up in the woods…”

“Because you’re my best friend, Dale. Why wouldn't I?”

“Just something someone said to me, ‘s’all.”

Tucker glances at him, a wary look on his face. “Who said what?” he asks cautiously.

“Mr Parsons, down at the grocery store. He said I must be one of two things, a parasite or your kept woman. I don't even think I know what a 'kept woman' is, but I know it ain't good.”

Tucker’s jaw twitches. It's a look Dale knows well, because Tucker's as ornery as an old goat and it usually signifies someone well and truly testing his patience, but in this case it's more of a silent seething and Dale feels like he's just poked a sleeping bear.

“What did you say?” Tucker asks, waving away a moth as it flits past them towards one of the lights.

“I just took my stuff and left. I didn't know what to say, honestly.”

“Dale, what’ve I told you about sticking up for yourself? You’re gonna just let him say those things to you? Where everyone can hear?”

Dale frowns down at his knees, scuffing one of his boots against the porch decking. There's a big, yellow moon coming up and casting its strange light across the yard, long shadows snaking across the grass. “I know, I know, but I thought...what if he’s right? Am I just a burden to you? Have I always -”

He's cut off by Tucker knocking his empty beer can off the arm of his chair as he gets to his feet, the clatter of metal on wood startling Dale into leaping up as well, his heart pounding at the sudden burst of movement. It's been weeks but his body's still on high alert for danger, and an angry Tucker's almost as scary as a suicidal college kid.

Tucker jabs his right index finger into Dale's chest.

“You are not,” he says, with this quiet vehemence that has Dale frozen in place, “and you have never been, a _burden_. D’you hear me?”

“Tuck," Dale begins, beseeching, "I don’t have anything. I wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for you, I don’t have a real house, I don’t have anything to share with you. People think badly of me! They think I’m a nasty little deer tick with my jaws sunk into your pretty hide and I think they might be right!”

Tucker grabs him, strong fingers curling around the tops of his arms and manhandling him until they're close, face-to-face, close enough for those blue eyes to pin him. “Dale,” he says quietly, thumbs pressing into Dale's biceps. “Do you love me?”

Dale feels like he’s just dropped from the top of the Big Dipper at Camden Park, the butterflies in his stomach the size of hummingbirds now. “Yes,” he says hoarsely, vehemently. “More than anythin’ else in the world, Tucker.”

“I don’t have anyone else, you know that. Never really have. You know folks around here don't think much of me. _You_ are all I have, Dale.”

Dale’s eyes settle on the healing split across the bridge of Tucker’s nose. Somehow violence has tended to follow Tucker around like an angry bee, from the moment his step-daddy appeared on the scene when they were ten years old, to the moment those college kids strung him up and…Well. When they were at school, most of the class were strong-boned and dark and somehow permanently covered in dust and dirt and then there was Tucker, small and blonde and pale, standing out like a sore thumb. His momma never took him to church and Tucker never believed, still doesn't, and in a place as tensely religious as theirs it doesn't make him any friends. He doesn't ever seem to care though. Certainly didn't care what people thought when he decided to pick Dale as his best friend. Two outsiders against the world.

It hurts him to the bone that Tucker, the gentlest, kindest person he knows has been beaten down and left disappointed time and time again. It makes Dale want to wrap him up, never let go, except that Tucker hates to be coddled; would hate to know anyone thought he needed protecting.

“I mean it, Dale,” Tucker says with a soft little shake for emphasis, before he lets go to slump back against the porch railings. They're still close - close enough for Dale to see the ferocity of Tucker's heart blazing in his eyes, and how much that brief burst of emotion's taken it out of him. “I don’t want you listening to those folks out there, talkin’ crap about you. They don’t know you like I do. They don't know either of us. It makes me mad that they think they do.”

With the wave of adrenaline cresting over his head, threatening to drown him in jitters and jangling nerves, Dale stares for a long, long moment, breathing a little hard. What he really wants to do is sink down to sit on the decking and demolish a can of beer in a few good gulps, let the bubbles sting his throat and fuzz up his head. What he does instead is step closer to Tucker, right up close, bringing a hand up to cup his jaw gently, stroking a thumb across his cheek. Tucker gazes right back at him, moonlight streaking across his face and lighting up the pale of his eyelashes, picking out the sharp flax of his stubble, and the determined, clear blue of his eyes. He looks more tired than Dale’s seen him in a long time, something a little shadowy lurking in those blue depths. He looks _vulnerable_ , which ain't right at all. Tucker's always been the strong one, the self-sufficient one of them both.

“How d’you manage to look iller'n when you were in the hospital?” Dale asks ruefully, thumb tracing lightly over the bridge of Tucker’s nose, right where the skin had split under one of Chad’s blows. It’s nearly healed now, just the faintest line, but Tucker’s not healed. Tucker’s not right at all.

"'Cause I was high on morphine, that's why. 'Cause I wasn't reliving it every damned night and I hadn't realised how broke in the head I was yet."

Those words make fear squeeze Dale's heart. “You’re not broke, Tuck, you’re just...you’re tired out and your brain’s trying to get a grip on it all, that's all.” He slides his hand around to the back of Tucker’s neck, fingers scritching the short hairs at the back of his head, digging gently into the taught muscles at his nape.

“My brain is like a _horror_ movie. I close my eyes and I see blood and guts everywhere. I _smell_ it. I hear bones grinding up. I see you disappearing off after that son of a bitch college kid not knowing if I’d see you again. How did we not die out there, Dale? We should've died ten times over.”

“Leaving you there against that tree was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, Tuck. When I came back...I thought...”

Dale closes his eyes tightly, a notch of a frown between his brows as he remembers the hot, wet slick of Tucker's blood.

_“Tucker?” he tried tentatively, reaching out and cupping a cool, blood-sticky cheek, frightened by the lack of warmth. “Oh my gosh, Tucker…”_

_His eyes blurred as he swallowed against the urge to throw up, the lump in his throat threatening to choke him as he realised he faced a lifetime without his best friend, the only person who'd ever seen anything good in him, the only person who ever looked at him with those fond smiles; he couldn't even bring himself to pretend not to be crying as Alison crouched next to him, her hand reaching for Tucker’s throat._

_“Hey,” she said after a second, voice full of a compassion that just made him sob harder. “Dale, it’s okay, he’s still got a pulse…here, feel...”_

_She took his hand, guiding it lower and pressing his fingers under Tucker’s jaw, over scratchy stubble and...yes. Oh, god, yes. She was right._

_“He's alive!” he gasped. "God, Tucker, please don’t die,” he begged, leaning in and pressing their foreheads together, closing his eyes tightly for a moment. “Don’t die, okay?”_

_“Dale, how’re we gonna get him out of here? The truck's totalled.”_

_Rubbing his eyes clear as he tried to steel himself, Dale looked down at Tucker sorrowfully. He was so tired, so gosh-darned tired, but there was no way they were spending another minute in those woods if they didn't have to. “We start walkin', I guess. C'n you grab his hat from the truck?"_

“You were so cold, I thought…” the frown of desperate sorrow furrows deeper into Dale’s brow and he opens his eyes to meet Tucker’s rueful gaze, dragging in a ragged breath to try and reassure himself.

“I know,” Tucker says softly. “I know what you must’ve thought. I’m sorry, Dale. I wish I could've stayed awake a little longer.”

Even through the blur of tears Dale can see that Tucker’s eyes are just full of compassion, and understanding, and love.

He shakes his head fiercely, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Shit, Tucker, you were bleeding all over the place, you were in shock...I was so afraid to leave you, that I’d come back and find you gone…But you stayed alive. You're tougher'n a boiled owl, you know that?”

“Well now, you saved the day _and_ you carried my sorry ass back to the cop’s truck by yourself. Talk about dead weight.”

“I’d’ve carried you all the way back home if I’d had to.”

Tucker smiles and it makes his eyes soften. He closes them as he leans in to press his forehead to Dale's shoulder, his breaths a bare whisper against Dale's throat. Dale winds his fingers into Tucker's hair, holding the back of his head gently.

"What're you thinkin'?" he asks quietly.

"That maybe you should stay for a while. Maybe we c'n help each other with this thing."

**********

Dale's slept in Tucker's bed more times than he can remember. The sheets are always clean and often they're fresh in from the washing line, scented with sunshine and cut grass and the occasional finger-print of oil or wood-stain or paint from Tucker's own work-worn fingers.

As Dale's loosening his dungarees he watches Tucker shrug out of his shirt and feels cold water run through his veins at the sight of the scar under his ribs, still pink after having the stitches out earlier in the week, the faint discolouration of bruises still visible across his pale skin. Dale looks away before Tucker sees, resisting the urge to go over there and bear-hug him, hold every inch of him close.

Jangers sleeps on the rug on the scrubbed floorboards, on a folded blanket Tucker digs out of the back of his old wardrobe. Dale assures him the rug is just fine, that half the time Jangers just sleeps on the bare lino in the trailer out of choice, but Tucker's insistence that Jangers be comfortable makes warmth bloom in his chest. Within twenty minutes of lying down, snuffling snores are audible over the side of the bed, familiar and comforting.

And while Jangers sleeps on with the unburdened mind of a happy dog, they both lie wide awake on their backs in the dark, Tucker with his hands behind his head, Dale just loose-limbed, one of his hands lightly touching Tucker's hip under the sheets. It makes him think of nights they've _really_ slept together, sweating in the humidity of summer nights, keeping each other warm in bitter-cold winters, tangling those sheets more times than Dale could count. He's learned every one of Tucker's freckles and scars and lines of muscle over the years. It's another part of their friendship that would have half the town reaching for their pitchforks if they knew for sure, instead of just whispering rumours amongst themselves. Dale doesn't even know if Tucker's straight or gay, isn't even too sure about himself - they've never discussed it since it's never seemed to matter. All Dale knows is, there can't be nothin' wrong with the way Tucker makes him feel, like if he felt any more love his heart could burst right out of his chest.

"Screech owls're loud tonight, huh?" he says quietly, needing to break the quiet of that room. He's been sleeping with the lights on, lately, and the darkness feels like it's pressing in on him, full of shadows and uncertainty.

"Sounds kinda like someone bein' murdered, don't it?"

"Yeah," Dale agrees reluctantly, because now he actually _does_ know what that sounds like, and god, if he never hears another human being scream for mercy for the rest of his life he'll die happy.

There's a pause of silence, just their breathing and Jangers' tail thumping on the rug as he chases rabbits in his sleep, then:

"I haven't been sleepin' too good, Dale," Tucker says quietly. There's just enough moonlight coming around the edges of the heavy curtains to pick out his face, and in the intimate darkness of that room things feel safer now; safer to express the things that - when they were kids - their daddies would've kicked their butts for, for showing any kind of weakness. "Barely at all, actually."

Dale takes a deep breath, the bed springs shifting just slightly beneath him. "I have nightmares about them kids too."

"I can hardly close my eyes, never mind get to the nightmares," Tucker admits. "I just get strung up from that tree again, or I'm getting my hand chopped, or I'm alone an' bleeding out, wonderin' how long it'll take 'fore a black bear gets me. Wondering if I'll ever see you again."

Dale's fingers twitch with the urge to reach out for one of Tucker's hands. "Feels safer now we're together."

"Yeah," Tucker agrees softly. "Look, I'm sorry I blew up at you out there, Dale."

"That's okay. You were bein' nice with it."

Tucker turns his head on the pillow so that his next words are directed right into the small space between them. "I just know how down on yourself y'are. And I need you to know, for the hundredth time, that I don't see any of those things that you see, or that Mister fuckin' Parsons sees."

Dale's heart does a little flip-flop in his chest as he turns his head as well, til he can see the glint of Tucker's eyes. "What do you see?" he asks hopefully.

He can hear the smile in Tucker's response. "Oh we're doin' this again?"

"I like it when you say nice things about me," Dale admits.

"Like how you're kind, and strong, and as loyal as ol' Jangers down there?"

"Yeah?"

"And you've got that crazy memory for facts, and you care about people so damned much, and you're the best friend I've ever had? And how I need you around, 'cause it turns out I don't cope too well on my own anymore?"

Dale has to swallow before he can speak, and even then his throat kind of clicks on the word: "I wanna be around, Tuck. I need you too."

There's another long, long moment of silence, comfortable and soft, and Dale can't honestly remember the last time he felt so at home. Fighting the desperate urge to close the foot or so of space between them and kiss Tucker makes his toes curl a little against the cool bedsheets.

"Hey Dale?"

"Yeah?"

"You think we should look for another cabin?"

Dale blinks. His eyes're starting to adjust to the darkness now and the moon's getting brighter outside, and Tucker is so familiar to him it doesn't take much for his brain to piece together the shadowy pieces into the face he loves so much. "In the same parts?"

"Hell no, there's probably still a crazed aunt or uncle or grandma up there. No, somewhere else. Somewhere peaceful, like the last one was s'posed to be."

"What about money, though?"

"Yeah, I know. But I don't wanna give up on our dream, Dale. I can't."

Dale says candidly, "Then yeah, we should start lookin'."

Tucker brings his arms down from the pillow and turns further onto his side, so he's facing Dale and they're their own little cocoon against the darkness, warm and intimate. "I was thinkin'..."

Dale waits for the conclusion. It dawns on him as he waits that Alison and Tucker were not so different, after all. Hard-working, smart, independent, unafraid to go against the grain. On a totally superficial level, both blonde and blue-eyed. Both like a force of nature. He has a type, apparently.

"I was thinkin' maybe we shouldn't be lookin' for a vacation cabin, we should just be lookin' for a cabin. Like a house." There's a moment of hesitation before Tucker adds quietly: "A home, I guess."

Dale feels it like a thump to his chest, like when he's lying down and Jangers accidentally steps on him, a bruising pressure on his solar plexus that leaves him breathless. "You mean forever?"

"Yeah. Away from this town where everyone thinks badly of us. Somewhere we can just be us."

"I'd like that very much, Tucker," Dale says in a rush of earnestness, desperate for Tucker not to take it back, to laugh and say he's just joking around. "Yes. We should do that. Can we do that?"

"We can try. A few of the newspapers wanted me to sell the story of what happened up there and I said no at the time, but now I'm thinkin'...maybe somethin' good could come of that shit-show, y'know?"

"We deserve somethin' good," Dale agrees. "I could ask Alison to come along and then maybe they'll pay us even more, for her side of the story too!"

"Good thinkin', Dale. Add the romance angle to the whole thing and they'll be clamouring for more."

"And all the while, secretly, _you're_ the romance-angle."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I appreciated your encouraging me an' Ali, Tuck, but it was never gonna hold. She's from a different world to us. It was like a bear tryin' to date a butterfly, or somethin'."

"You know I wasn't tryin' to push you away, right?"

"Yeah, I know. How d'you know I'd come back, though?"

"I didn't. I just hoped," Tucker admits quietly. "But if you hadn't, I always just wanted what was best for you, Dale."

" _You_ are, Tucker. When you were lyin' against that tree back there, you know you told me that life is short?"

Tucker turns over onto his back and reaches between them, taking Dale's hand in his own as he shifts to make himself more comfortable. He frowns up at the ceiling. "I don't remember much of what I said, honestly."

"Y'said 'you gotta go after what you want'," Dale confirms, squeezing Tucker's fingers. "An' you were right, Tuck. But I don't need to go lookin' anymore."

"No more college girls?" Tucker asks hopefully.

"I swear."

"Just me 'n' you."

"Like always."

"You gonna let the chickens out in the mornin'?"

Dale beams in the darkness - it's one of his favourite tasks, letting those girls out into the sunshine, checking the straw for still-warm eggs. "I'd like that, Tuck."

"I guess we should try and get some shut-eye then," Tucker sighs, and Dale can hear the reluctance in his soft voice. He squeezes Tucker's hand again, warm and callused and _alive_ against his own.

"Think about that cabin we're gonna buy," he suggests. "Think you can put your mind to that instead?"

"I'll see what I can do," Tucker says, shifting a little closer 'til they're shoulder to shoulder. "I'll be here if you need me, Dale."

"I know, Tucker. Just like always."


End file.
